Scholars' Bank :: Browsing by Author "Lichtenstein, Sarah"

Browsing by Author "Lichtenstein, Sarah"

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Open Access
Accident probabilities and seat belt usage: A psychological perspective
(Accident Analysis and Prevention, 1978) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Motorists' reluctance to wear seat belts is examined in light of research showing (a) that protective behavior is influenced more by the probability of a hazard than by the magnitude of its consequences and (b) that people are not inclined to protect themselves voluntarily against very low probability threats. It is argued that the probability of death or injury on any single auto trip may be too low to incite a motorist's concern. Maintenance of a "single trip" perspective makes it unlikely that seat belts will be used. Change of perspective, towards consideration of the risks faced during a lifetime of driving, may increase the perceived probabilities of injury and death and, therefore, induce more people to wear seat belts.
Open Access
Behavioral decision theory
(1977) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Open Access
Behavioral decision theory perspectives on protective behavior
(Cambridge University, 1987) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Categorical Confidence
(Decision Research, 1983-04) Fischhoff, Baruch; MacGregor, Donald G.; Lichtenstein, Sarah
People tend to be inadequately sensitive to the extent of their own knowledge. This insensitivity typically emerges as overconfidence. That is, people's assessments of the probability of having answered questions correctly are typically too high compared to the portion of questions they get right. Few debiasing procedures have proven effective against this problem. Those that have worked seem to be directive in character. Rather than improving subjects' feeling for how much they know, such procedures may have suggested to subjects how their probability assessments should be changed. These successful manipulations include giving feedback and requiring subjects to provide reasons contradicting their chosen answers. The present study attempted to improve the appropriateness of confidence with a nondirective method. Subjects were asked to sort items into a specified number of piles according to their confidence in the correctness of their answers. Subsequently, they assigned a number to each pile expressing the probability that each item in the pile was correct. It emphasizes confidence assessment over fact assessment; it forces the comparison of knowledge levels for different questions, it deemphasizes the need to produce numbers; it gives different hints as to the fineness of the discrimination that assessors can make. This procedure differed from its predecessors in many respects; nonetheless, performance here was indistinguishable from that observed elsewhere. Although some small pockets of improvement were noted, confidence was largely resistant to this manipulation. Such robustness is discouraging for the developer of elicitation procedures, encouraging for the student of judgmental processes.
Open Access
Comparable Worth as Multiattribute Utility
(Decision Research, 1984-11) Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Creating Algorithms as an Aid to Judgment
(Decision Research, 1989) Lichtenstein, Sarah; MacGregor, Donald G.; Slovic, Paul
A critical task often performed by decision makers is to make estimates of important points of fact. Previous research has suggested that decomposition of numerical estimation problems can result in improved estimation performance, particularly when the problem is structured as an algorithm. However, algorithms used in past studies have been provided by the experimenters, rather than created by the estimator. This study reports on the usefulness of algorithmic decomposition when people are trained to create their own algorithms in the context of a task requiring them to evaluate an answer given to them for an estimation problem. The results suggest that people can be trained to construct complete and useful algorithms to verify numerical estimates, but that misinformation about factual knowledge used in an algorithm can seriously bias estimation performance.
Open Access
Decision making
(Wiley, 1988) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Open Access
Facts and fears: Understanding perceived risk
(Plenum, 1980-08-08) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Images of disaster: Perception and acceptance of risks from nuclear power
(1979) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Open Access
Informing people about risk
(1980) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Designers of programs for informing the public about radiation hazards need to consider the difficulties inherent in communicating highly technical information about risk. To be effective, information campaigns must be buttressed by empirical research aimed at determining what people know, what they want to know, and how best to convey that information. Drawing upon studies of risk perception, this paper describes some of the problems that any information program must confront.
Open Access
Judged frequency of lethal events
(1978) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch; Layman, Mark; Combs, Barbara
A series of experiments studied how people judge the frequency of death from various causes. The judgments exhibited a highly consistent but systematically biased subjective scale of frequency. Two kinds of bias were identified: (a) a tendency to overestimate small frequencies and underestimate larger ones, and (b) a tendency to exaggerate the frequency of some specific causes and to underestimate the frequency of others, at any given level of objective frequency. These biases were traced to a number of possible sources, including disproportionate exposure, memorability, or imaginability of various events. Subjects were unable to correct for these sources of bias when specifically instructed to avoid them. Comparisons with precious laboratory studies are discussed, along with methods for improving frequency judgments and the implications of the present findings for the management of societal hazards.
Open Access
Modeling the societal impact of fatal accidents
(1984) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Fischhoff, Baruch
Open Access
Perceived risk: Psychological factors and social implications
(The Royal Society, 1981) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Subjective judgments, whether by experts or lay people, are a major component in any risk assessment. If such judgments are faulty, risk management efforts are likely to be misdirected. This paper begins with an analysis of biases exhibited by lay people and experts when they make judgments about risk. Next the similarities and differences between lay and expert evaluations are examined in the context of a specific set of hazardous activities and technologies. Finally, insights from this research are applied to the problems of informing people about risk and forecasting public response towards nuclear power.
Open Access
Perception and Acceptability of Risk from Energy Systems
(Erlbaum, 1981) Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah; Slovic, Paul
Open Access
Preference reversals and the measurement of environmental values
(1993) Irwin, Julie; Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah; McClelland, Gary H.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that theoretically equivalent measures of preference, such as choices and prices, can lead to systematically different preference orderings, known as preference reversals. Two major causes of preference reversals are the compatibility effect and the prominence effect. The present studies demonstrate that the combined effects of prominence and compatibility lead to predictable preference reversals in settings where improvements in air quality are compared with improvements in consumer commodities by two methods-willingness to pay for each improvement and choice (For which of the two improvements would you pay more? Which improvement is more valuable to you?). Willingness to pay leads to relatively greater preference for improved commodities; choice leads to relatively greater preference for improved air quality. These results extend the domain of preference reversals and pose a challenge to traditional theories of preference. At the applied level, these findings indicate the need to develop new methods for valuing environmental resources.
Open Access
Preference reversals: A broader perspective
(American Economic Association, 1983-02) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
The psychometric study of risk perception
(1986) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Rating the risks
(Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 1979) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
The management and regulation of high-risk technologies need to be based on an understanding of the ways in which people think about risk. Without such understanding, well-intended laws and policies may be ineffective, or even counterproductive. To this end, recent studies of risk perception have examined the opinions people express when they are asked, in various ways, to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and societal decision making buy (i) improving methods for eliciting opinions about risk, (ii) providing a basis for understanding and anticipating public responses to hazards, and (iii) improving the communication of risk information among laypeople, technical experts, and policy makers. This paper describes the results of these studies and examines their implications for risk assessment.
Open Access
Regulation of risk: A psychological perspective
(University of California, 1985) Slovic, Paul; Fischhoff, Baruch; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Open Access
Reversals of preference between bids and choices in gambling decisions
(Journal of Experimental Psycholog, 1971) Slovic, Paul; Lichtenstein, Sarah
Subjects in 3 experiments chose their preferred bet from pairs of bets, and later bid for each bet separately. In each pair, one bet had· a higher probability ·of winning (P bet); the other offered more to win (S bet). Bidding method (selling vs. buying) and payoff method (real-play vs. hourly wage) were varied. Results showed that when the P bet was chosen, the$ bet o􀁙en received a higher bid. These inconsistencies violate every risky decision model, but can be understood via information-processing considerations. In bidding, S starts with amount to win and .adjusts it downward to account for other attributes of the bet. In choosing; there is no natural starting point. Thus amount to win dominates bids but not choices. One need not call this behavior irrational, but it casts doubt on the descriptive validity of expected utility models of risky decision making.